Guest Editor Anne Buckingham, Chief Commercial Officer at Amplify, believes it’s time for change in the way infrastructure projects are procured and delivered.
The ZEV infrastructure sector has had a challenging 18 months, with political and economic change causing uncertainty and delays.
However, the ZEV mandate remains, commitments from Government are emerging, industry is collaborating, and private sector interest is returning. These in tandem offer us the opportunity for a reset, to more entrepreneurial and innovative commercial and technology collaborations.
Where we came from
In its nascent phase, procurement of ZEV infrastructure projects was driven by Government grant funding and carbon reduction targets, directed at a range of non-specialist public sector officers from energy, transportation and fleet teams. Faced with a huge volume of entrepreneurial start-ups, works requiring connection to critical high voltage and low voltage electrical networks, multiple emerging technologies, and a lack of certainty on future road maps and regulation, procurement decisions were often made on the basis of familiar non-specialist brands and entities experienced in public sector contracting rather than best fit technical solutions.
Procurement was expensive and complex, and therefore once complete, tender structures were replicated rather than evolved. As grant funding ebbed, procurement focussed on long term private concessions and this reduced access to solutions aligned to the bespoke needs of the project.
Where we are now
Today we are beyond that. Entrepreneurial start ups have matured, 75,000 chargers have been installed across the UK, and that has produced specialist experience in grid connection applications, charging, generation and storage technologies, load management, site designs and operational efficiencies. We understand the impact of low quality charging technologies in terms of harmonic distortion for the grid, and on the performance uptime of charging networks – for public networks, this can now mean punitive penalties. We know the service regimes required to ensure networks are operational, and can plan for spares and pre-emptive maintenance.
Through the early investors and leading charge point operators, we now have access to the data to build informed utilisation forecasts, and the technology to load-manage available power against that charging demand – augmenting capacity on sites where needed. We can accurately size grid applications, avoiding unnecessary costs and avoiding ringfencing of unused capacity that prevents others from making best use of it.
There is a direction of travel on connectors, outputs and technologies forecast for the short, medium and longer term – there are some that we know must be improved upon when it comes to scale (including battery technologies) and others that will need to find their place (including wireless, hydrogen and off-grid solutions). In the same way that one size doesn’t fit all in terms of charging hardware outputs and configurations, procurement practice must be adapted to allow for dialogue and focus on partnering, communicating, and listening.
What needs to change
For most of us, there is no ignoring the demonstrable change in our climate, nor the data on health impacts from transport emissions. We must remove the barriers to the ZEV transition, and this includes allowing confidence that the procurement choices taken today will be reasonably future-proofed, and that commercial contracting allows flexibility to include emerging technology and solutions. The initial and ongoing operational cost of all vehicles – not just the premium vehicles, must come down to encourage consumers, and the commitment to transition to their use must be made to reassure investors.
Regions, use cases, available funding and capital, grid capacity, current technologies, and future demand forecasts all influence solution design. A balance needs to be found between best use of infrastructure investment, future proofing to allow for upgrades, and getting moving with initial phase rollout. Therefore it is important to open up the dialogue in procurement to address scope, and encourage commercial partnerships that flex throughout the contract terms to ensure emerging technologies can be introduced as product roadmaps develop.
The most effective teams are empowered, diverse and collaborative – and this is our focus at Amplify – on partnering, communicating and listening, with our customers, teams, partners and competitors, to deliver quality, reliable, trusted infrastructure projects.
